This week I struggled almost every day to get myself into the studio. So I’m extra proud of myself for making the effort to show up each day. I’ve done several of these 30 day challenges and I know how difficult they can be, but I always find myself struggling more than I anticipate at…
Category: Fishished
January 2022 STRADA Challenge – Week 3
I love alla prima painting, but keep running into the situation where my paint no longer layers. In the past, I’ve just scraped off the paint and put whatever color I wanted in its place or let the painting dry and go over it with another layer. However, these days I’m trying to be much…
January 2022 STRADA Challenge – Week 2
I’ve been plagued with imposter syndrome throughout this challenge. I keep expecting the feeling to go away, but it has persisted for two weeks now. I feel like an imposter. I’m having all of this success with actually selling my work and joining a gallery, but I feel like I don’t even know how to…
January 2022 STRADA Challenge – Week 1
Here we are, a week into another STRADA Easel Daily Painting Challenge. If you’re unfamiliar with the challenge, it’s a daily challenge hosted by STRADA Easel to paint from life every day in January. It typically happens twice a year in January and September. I usually do the January challenge and skip the September one…
2021 Year in Review
This year flew by and I haven’t even had a chance to catch my breath yet. Oddly enough, it started with a distinct lack of painting. All of the work I had put into painting and my blog had fizzled out since the end of 2019. I had experienced a lot of traumatic family hardships…
Finished Rifle Painting
Yikes! This Thursday really snuck up on me. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t do very much painting this week/month. I did, however, finish the rifle painting for my husband. I spent most of this week working on making, photographing, and creating listings for my stickers. I’m also in the process of moving all of…
Bumps in the Road
It wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy. I slipped up this last week and didn’t paint. I’m not sorry about it though. The holidays were here and I enjoyed a lot of time with my family. Now that they’re over for now though, it’s back to work. I didn’t post last Monday, but…
Prioritizing Art
Now that life has slowed back down to a normal pace, I think I’m going to try to be consistent with this blog again. I made a few attempts earlier this year but was already too overloaded with obligations for it to stick. Now that October is over, things are slowing down and I feel…
Building a Daily Painting Habit
Building a daily painting habit or rebuilding a daily painting habit, in my case, is no easy task. I used to be very good at maintaining a habit of painting every day, but have struggled considerably since the pandemic started. While some people found the extra time on their hands a boon to their art,…
2021 Art Goals
Goals are important when doing any activity. They’re especially important if you intend on accomplishing anything substantial. The hard part is planning out these goals. For me especially, I’ve been struggling with the long term direction I want to ultimately go with my art. I recently met an artist and thought: “That! That is what…
To what end?
Sometimes you have to ask yourself the question “to what end?” To some extent this most recent hiatus from painting has been a crisis. It has also just been a break, a time to focus on other creative outlets. I’ve driven myself really hard the last few years to improve as an artist. I’ve had…
Painting: Use it or Lose it
Unfortunately, painting is a use it or lose it skill. After a pretty long hiatus, I’m trying to paint again and finding out that I’ve lost a lot of what I had gained over the last few years of consistent painting. All of the effortless color mixing I was doing this time last year is…